MRS. BUSH: I'm so glad to be here today. I know most of you were in
the roundtable so you know why we picked Snowden, why we came here to
this school to talk about reading.

One of the points that I wanted to make specifically with this
visit is what we can do with middle-age children -- middle age
children? Is there such a thing? -- after those first three years or so
in school, if they haven't learned to read, how important it is for
schools to do interventions like this school does to make sure they do
learn to read.

And part of the money that my husband proposed in the Jobs for the
21st Century Program includes money -- and this is in his 2005 budget
proposal -- for striving readers. And that's what Dr. Lyon was talking
about when he talked about kids who were in the fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh, eighth, ninth grade who have not learned to read.

And we know that by the time they're in the ninth grade, that's
when kids start dropping out of school. Because it's by then, by the
time you go to high school, almost 100 percent of your course work is
dependent upon your reading ability. And these are ways -- what we've
seen here at this school -- that we can help make students make sure
they do learn to read.

And one of the students that I met didn't know how to read by the
time he was in the sixth grade, and he's now the top reader in the
eighth grade. Which shows that if we do intervene, if we make a real
effort to find materials that older children are interested in, besides
doing all the things that we talked about that are specific and
systematic about teaching children to read with older students, they
can learn to read and be successful. So I'm really excited to be here.

Another important point about Snowden is that this is a very warm
and accepting and supportive environment for students and teachers. And
that kind of community, that kind of support from a school community is
very important for students, especially students who don't do as well.
That kind of support helps them build their own self-confidence, build
their own self-concepts so that they can start to do better.

So I'm so glad to be here and I want to congratulate the principal,
Catherine Battle, and all these teachers that were here. I also want to
thank Reid Lyon from the National Institutes of Health for being here
again with me. He's gone to other summits that I've hosted on early
childhood reading, as well as the striving readers. And he's a great
interview himself, if any of you are interested in how children learn
to read. We have a lot of new research and that's what's very
encouraging, about how people actually learn to read and what we can do
systematically to teach children and adults to read.

Do you all have any other questions.

Q Mrs. Bush, when we were in there, of course a lot of the teachers
were talking about different things they do in order to boost test
scores and get students to read. What do you think are the problems
that are keeping some of our schools, teachers, administrators from --
falling short? What are some of the problems?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I mean the very same problems this school has.
Which is, children with a very wide range of abilities. And it's not
easy. Like Ms. Drew said, she has the checklist, a huge checklist to
make sure every child -- the needs of every child are met, and that's
very difficult. That's one of the hardest parts about teaching.

But one of the reasons they're successful is because they do
constantly assess, so they can see if a child didn't learn that concept
or this concept. And if they didn't, they can actually look at the way
they taught it, just think maybe what I did was wrong, what the teacher
did was wrong, and I should have done it, taught it in another way. But
it also allows them to go back to make sure each child does have the
skill that they need so they can move on to what the next skill is.

And that testing part of it, the assessment part of it, is so
important. We'd never go to the doctor and tell the doctor they
couldn't run tests. So to think that schools wouldn't run tests on
children, they have to be able to test children so they can diagnose
what the children's problems are and then adjust their instruction so
that they can meet the needs of each of the children.

Q Mrs. Bush, what message do you want to give to the children
themselves who are -- you know, some love reading but others just do
not like it and are really struggling?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I hope -- and I think this is really important. I
think we think -- all adults think when we send children off to school
that they know what they're there for. But I think it's very important
for parents and for teachers to clearly state what the goals are. One
of the goals is for every child to learn to read.

And, you know, your goals are small when you're in kindergarten;
you want them to learn the alphabet, you want them to learn the sounds
that are associated with the letter, you want them to learn -- and this
is something that all of us who were lap read, as Gary called it
earlier, which means we were read to at home before we learned how to
read -- know that you have to actually be taught. And that is, in
English we read from the left side of the line to the right side, we
turn pages the way we turn them. And those are all things that -- the
actual idea that the printed word is the same as the spoken word, the
symbol for the word that we're speaking. All of those concepts we think
come naturally to children, but they don't necessarily.

And so I think it's important for us to let children know what our
goals are for them, and then how important those goals are for their
whole school career and then for their life.

Q Ma'am, you're going to a fundraiser after this. How is the
campaign going in Tennessee? You had a fundraiser a week ago and you
weren't expected to do a whole lot of campaigning in this state. But
are you going to put more focus on Tennessee now? And if you are, why?

MRS. BUSH: Sure. We have a lot of friends here. And as you know
from the last election, every single state is important. Tennessee was
very important to us in the last election, as was every other state we
won.

But I'm glad to have the chance to travel the country for my
husband and to campaign for him. I wasn't in -- did you mean I was in a
fundraiser in Tennessee last week?

Q No, you weren't.

MRS. BUSH: No, I wasn't. I was going to say, no, I wasn't last
week. (Laughter.) But I'm really glad to be here to have that
opportunity. And I'm also really glad to be here to talk about the
success we've had with the No Child Left Behind Act and the challenges
that we have, all of us as adults have in front of us because of
wanting to make sure every child learns and every child does well in
school. And then the chance to give an example to other schools in
Tennessee and other schools around the country of a school who is
really concentrating on making sure children learn to read and are
being so successful at it.

Q Mrs. Bush, how specifically will you --

Q -- campaign --

MRS. BUSH: The campaign is doing great. Thank you for asking.

Q How specifically will you use what you learned here with the
successes here at Snowden to help other schools?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I actually talk about this a lot when I travel
around the country. I talk about what I've seen, specific programs that
specific schools are doing. I visited a school in Florida that was just
a middle school, it didn't include the kindergarten through six like
this school does.

And there, I watched a class, just like I watched Ms. Drew's class
today. I watched a class where I saw children who didn't -- who had not
learned to read yet being taught to read in a very specific and
systematic way. And that's just another example that I talk about as I
travel around the country.

Q Mrs. Bush, looking at the No Child Left Behind standards, do you
feel or what do you think about the criticism that they may be too
strict because a number of schools are falling short of those
standards?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I don't think they're too strict. I think it's
incumbent on us as adults to set the standards high because, you know
what? If we do, kids will meet them. My husband uses that line, the
soft bigotry of low expectations. In other words, if we don't expect
some group or another group of children to do -- not to do well, we
don't expect them to do well, they'll probably prove our expectations.
And it's really important for us to set high expectations for all
children because they can meet them. And we have to also set high
standards for ourselves as teachers and as community members and as
politicians and as legislators, people who write the policy. We need to
have really high expectations as well.

Q Mrs. Bush, one thing that comes up in Memphis a lot is a lack of
parental involvement. Is there any sort of recipe that you can give
educators or parents to get them more involved in their kids'
education?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I hope -- I mean, all we can do I think is ask
parents to become involved. And I know that good schools will try to
contact parents as much as they possibly can. Some parents are sort of
intimidated to go to their child's school. But we want to really
encourage parents to come up to their child's school.

I want parents to know that they are their child's first teacher,
and that all those years that they have their children at home or in a
day care center before their children go off to public school are very,
very crucial years for their children. And if they will turn off the
television at night and read with their children, their children will
start school with a much larger vocabulary and really with a huge
advantage over children who haven't been read to or even talked to
directly.

So I think schools can certainly do what they can to help parents
and every community group needs to try to figure out ways to reach
parents to let parents know how important those years are when their
children are at home with them. And they go by so quickly.

My girls are about to graduate from college and it just seems like
yesterday they were sitting on my lap and we were reading books. So I
want to impress that upon parents how fast their children grow up and
not to waste those few years that you can have them at home with you.